I am a member of Unity & Struggle in Texas and I want to share an early pamphlet of the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO) that I re-read recently that has been a critical supplement for me of our group’s organizational studies. It is called “Towards a Revolutionary Party” (TARP) and was written in 1971, just two years after STO was founded and after the collapse of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the national student civil rights and anti-war network from which it emerged.

STO, like many New Communist organizations, grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) opposition to the Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) dominate tendency in SDS called Worker Student Alliance (WSA). When PLP took the position that all nationalism is reactionary it overnight put them in opposition to every national liberation struggle and hence every revolutionary Left tendency including the American Black movement which was then seen by many as a national liberation fight. RYM formed as a broad opposition to the WSA which inevitably led to another broad opposition to the Weathermen faction (which became RYM I), a group that emphasized and undertook armed struggle then and who felt that the American working class was inherently backward, and RYM II. It was out of RYM II that many Marxist Leninist pre-parties and grouplets would take shape and this included what would become the STO.

Chapter IX of SC&WR addresses the issues of Tito and Yugoslavia. In many ways the question of Yugoslavia could be seen as the last straw for the Johnson-Forest Tendency. Yet again orthodox Trotskyists and the Fourth International fetishized nationalized property and described Tito’s Yugoslavia as breaking Left from Stalin’s Russia without asking that central question: was the working class self-governing?

Along with China, Yugoslavia posed other challenges to the common conception of Marxism for that time. Like other exercises in national liberation, Yugoslavia raised questions about the role of the peasantry, the material limitations of national liberation without world revolution, and the dynamic class tensions within national liberation movements.

Hopefully the following prompts can help us think through some of these issues.

How do they describe the mode of labor in Yugoslavia? (86) How did this compare to Stalin’s Russia?

What was Tito’s People’s Front, and what role does the Johnson-Forest Tendency argue it played in relation to class tensions?

Tito and the Communist Party Yugoslavia (CPY) established a method of emboldening the bureaucracy that could be described as a process of upward mobility; “in its crisis it sought to strengthen the state authority by new recruitments from those who have shown readiness in the factory to exceed the norms in production.” (92) The notion of meritocracy is a common conception today of what an egalitarian society should look like. How have we encountered and challenged these sentiments in our own organizing?

The Titoist bureaucracy, through a process of criticism and self-criticism, argues for “decentralization.” (93) The demand for decentralization is still common in progressive/Left circles today. Is this enough? Does decentralization have any role in defining the new society?

The example of Yugoslavia is posed as similar to other experiences of national liberation. What was the relationship of the CPY bureaucracy to the Yugoslavian working class when it opposed the Kremlin? (96) How does the class nature of the Titoist bureaucracy explain its relationship to both the US and Russian empires? (94-95) How has the problem of socialism in one country been manifest in the historical failures of other national liberation movements – socialist, nationalist, or otherwise?

JFT describes the CPY bureaucracy as “concretely nationalist and abstractly internationalist,” what does this mean? (97) How has the Trotskyist tradition understood the nature and process of national liberation? Is it necessarily a bourgeois revolution? Are there alternative conceptions of national liberation movements, and why are they necessary?

What up everyone? Hope readers are having fun with State Capitalism and World Revolution ☺ I don’t think I got much to say as the questions kinda get at what SCWR is constantly trying to hammer from different angles. Here are some more questions which can guide us as we read SCWR.
Chapters 6-8

1-What is SCWR saying about the plan, the state, and the party? Why is it antithetical to the self-government of the working class?

2- What is the implications between the following two formulations: crisis of revolution is in the crisis of leadership versus the crisis of revolution is the crisis of the self-mobilization of the working class? Where does Trotskyism fall on this question and what does it say about Trotskyism according to SCWR?

3- What is the political economy of the post WWII era as JFT sees it? Has it changed in the neo-liberal era? If so, how?

4- How does SCWR describe the role of unions in the state-capitalist era?

5- What is the theory of permanent revolution? How does SCWR orient towards it in the post WWII era?

6- In “Leninism and the Transitional Regime” SCWR poses quiet an interesting history of Lenin’s relationship to the Russian working class after the October Revolution. Is SCWR being completely accurate in its historiography of Lenin?

The Johnson-Forest Tendency (JFT) has been at the foundation of our project here at Gathering Forces. The theoretical contributions JFT made to the worldwide working class movement place them in the traditions of Left-libertarian socialism, libertarian Marxism, and a broader anti-authoritarianism.

With the Left and Marxist tradition in the US historically dominated by tendencies that formulated a socialism ‘from above’ – namely, Stalinism, Social Democracy, and variants of Trotskyism – JFT has played a pivotal role challenging these traditions by restoring the notion that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself to the center of Marxism.

The method and conclusions of the Johnson-Forest Tendency contextually emerged from their break with Trotskyism in regards to Trotsky’s failure to understand the state-capitalist nature of Russia. The document State Capitalism & World Revolution (SCWR) is a statement of this break, and attempts to clarify some of the fundamental questions facing revolutionaries at the time. Is Russian “Communism” what socialism/ the new society actually looks like? What is Stalinism: a revolutionary force or counter-revolution? What is the unique feature of the modern bureaucracy under capitalism?

These are just some of the key questions this work tries to get at. Looking around the world and the left, these questions are still with us today.

Lots of militants roll their eyes when discussions over Russia begin. After all, James is known for demanding the Americanization of Bolshevism and here we are talking about Russia! Considering everything going on in the world and the hundreds of other books a militant could read right now, why look at SCWR?

Although it is over fifty years old, it was a profound advance on Marxist theory and still relevant for militants today. In many ways many of the questions the book raises have yet to be surpassed in terms of the development of capitalism and the revolutionary Left’s response to the dilemma’s facing oppressed people.

The following are questions raised in the first 5 chapters of SCWR:

What is Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism? Where does Trotsky think the Stalinists will end up? What does he think the Stalinist relationship to the bourgeoisie is?

What is JFT’s analysis of Stalinism? According to JFT what is Stalinism’s relationship to private property and to the Russian “Communist” state? According to JFT what are the implications of Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism?

What do they mean by “the fundamental antagonism of society was the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of production”? Why can only worker self-management of production solve this fundamental contradiction of capitalism?

What is the difference in understanding crisis and Russian “Communism” when using falling rate of profit in contrast to the under consumption argument? (10) What are the implications of the under consumptionist argument? (13)

If capitalism can plan, then does under consumption disappear, does crisis disappear, does the falling rate of profit disappear? Can capitalism plan completely? Can capitalism’s plan negate working class resistance or the falling rate of profit?

What is JFT trying to say about bureaucracy? What is the bureaucracies’ relationship to capital and to workers? What is significant about the sentence, “The bureaucracy inevitably must substitute the struggle over consumption, higher wages, pensions, education ,etc., for a struggle in production” (41). What does it mean to say that bureaucracy is an organic outgrowth of capitalist development and working class resistance? What is JFT trying to do when comparing the mode of labor in Russia and the mode of labor in the United States?

What is JFT’s critique of Trotskyism in relationship to the plan and the bureaucracy? Why is this important when one is attempting to destroy the bureaucracy and struggle for direct democracy?

As an anti-budget cuts organizer in Seattle, I am excited by the important debates Advance the Struggle (AS) has raised with their piece Crisis and Contradictions: Reflections and Lessons from March 4th. I basically agree with the perspective that AS is putting forward; it confirms and advances a lot of the perspectives that my comrades in Unity and Struggle have been developing, especially with our anti-budget cuts work with Democracy Insurgent in Seattle, with ella pelea! in Austin, and our comrade’s work at Berkley. For those who don’t know, Unity and Struggle is a revolutionary organization animated by a belief in the self-emancipation of oppressed people; for more info, check out the “About US” section of the Gathering Forces blog. I would consider Unity and Struggle and a lot of the milleiu around Gathering Forces to be part of the “class struggle Left” tendency that AS outlines and calls for; like AS we are attempting to chart a third path that is independent from both the centrists (the “we need to meet people where they are at” folks) and the adventurists (the “Occupy Everything Demand Nothing” folks). We appreciate the chance to dialogue with AS and other like-minded activists around the country and we also appreciate the chance to have principled debate with comrades from the other two tendencies.

The response pieces written by Socialist Organizer (SO) and Labors Militant Voice (LMV), raise some important challenges to this third tendency and highlight some key differences between us and the centrist tendency. It is important to note that LMV’s piece raises important critiques of SO’s piece and I engage with those here – I have no intention of lumping them together. I offer my notes on these responses in the hope of furthering the debate.

What I write here is relatively unsystematic because my comrades and I are in the middle of organizing for a strike at the University of Washington on May 3rd so I don’t have a lot of time to flesh this out. I hope comrades will forgive and correct any points here that are underdeveloped , inaccurate, or unclear. I am writing this from a first person perspective rather than formally representing Democracy Insurgent or Unity and Struggle, the groups I am a part of. I imagine that most people in both groups would agree with the spirit of what I put forward here but we simply don’t have the time to collectively write and edit a formal response right now because of all of our organizing and study groups.

One of the purposes of this blog is to discuss revolutionary organization. This phrase, conception, and type of organization have become very unpopular amongst American radicals and progressives today. What was once seen as a viable alternative for hundreds of thousands of people has now become a flickering candle in the wind. Why is this the case? While this post will not go into the history of how this has happened, this post hopes to engage this question on the terms of how the Johnson-Forest Tendency rethought this question in light of the new political realities of the post-WWII era. They advanced new ways of thinking about organization, politics, and revolution, that can contribute much to new discussions today that are going on and need to continue. At the same time, their advance had some profound weaknesses as well which Goldner discusses. While these weaknesses are very real, it still leaves the question of what alternatives there are if the vanguard party is dead and at the same time Facing Reality’s proposition of organization has failed as well.

I am posting two pieces by Loren Goldner. The first is a basic overview of the tendency. It will help contextualize the period they were in, provide a little autobiographical information on the authors, and in more broader terms explain what they were trying to do.

The second piece is Loren Goldner’s re-reading of Facing Reality. Goldner is attempting to look at this work, which was a product of a unique moment in capitalism. I have broken down Loren Goldner’s essay into key points with occasional commentary. Each of these points can be further explored in our discussion in the upcoming days.

1. Facing Reality has workerist excesses at times. LG defines it as “The book focuses almost exclusively (with the exception of Hungary) on workers’ struggles and power on the shop floor, and is therefore (rightly) open to the charge of workerism, an excessive point-of-production focus, with elements that seem at times almost syndicalist.” This is one of the reasons why James could not explain why such powerful shop floor self-activity did not result in revolution and how the neo-liberal offensive broke its back.

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